I emphasise that British colonialism is what I am referring to. No one was ambivalent about the barbaric rule of the Congo by the Belgian King Leopold II, whose savagery cost some 10 million lives, as documented in Adam Hochschild’s heart-wrenching King Leopold’s Ghost. I cried reading that book, and experienced intense feelings of animus towards white people, even though my own mother, being Polish, was white.
But in a country like Nigeria, Britain’s largest African colony, feelings towards colonialism were more complicated. In his 1947 book Path to Nigerian Freedom, Obafemi Awolowo, considered one of Nigeria’s Founding Fathers for his role in the independence struggle, offered a frank assessment of the challenges in mobilising his compatriots against British rule at the time. “Given a choice from among white officials, [Nigerian] chiefs and educated Nigerians as the principal rulers of the country, the illiterate man today would exercise his preference for the three in the order in which they are named. He is convinced, and has good reasons to be, that he can always get better treatment from the white man than he could hope to get from the chiefs and the educated elements,” Awolowo wrote.
According to this, while Nigeria’s educated elites wanted Britain out as fast as possible so they could start running their country, many regular Nigerians seemed to sense a fairness in the British exercise of power that they were not so sure of in their own leaders. Awolowo did not put this down to what was called “colonial brainwashing” but said that he felt many Nigerians had “good reasons” to think this way.
Of course, because British colonialism was hypocritically justified as stemming from concern (bless their good hearts) for the supposedly “savage” conditions of life in pre-colonial Africa, African anti-colonialists had little strategic choice but to construct a counter-narrative strongly negating this depiction, one portraying Africans in a positive light. This led to what Nigerian historian Toyin Falola described as the “simple but seductive thesis that Africa used to live in peace and innocence until its contact with Europeans”. And so the one-sided, sweeping colonialist narrative was countered with a one-sided, sweeping anti-colonialist narrative. But this did not mean that regular folk on the ground lost all memory of the past.
Obviously, as Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s famous 1958 book, Things Fall Apart, brilliantly portrayed, the disruption colonialism brought to the lives of everyday Nigerians was massive, and in my view, ultimately indefensible. Imagine foreigners come to your homeland, kill some of you, and tell the rest everything you ever believed is rubbish. Your religion is rubbish, your traditions are rubbish, your values are rubbish, the way you organise your entire economy and life is wrong.
The assault on African ideas was so severe that the continent is still trying to recover its identity; still trying to figure out an idea for modern Africanness that would not be an imitation of Westernness or so focussed on resisting Eurocentrism it ends up defining Africans in opposition to Europeans, thus ultimately being Eurocentric itself. Post-colonial Africa is still searching for an identity that explains who Africans are, not who they are not.
Yet in an interview a few years after independence, the same Achebe who had highlighted colonialism’s disruptive nature stated: “I am not one of those who would say Africa has gained nothing at all during the colonial period…this is ridiculous – we have gained a lot. But unfortunately, when two cultures meet . . . what happens is that some of the worst elements of the old are retained and some of the worst of the new are added.”
Intellectuals such as Achebe clearly recognised the identity crisis colonialism triggered. They also knew about British atrocities such as the looting and destruction of the ancient Benin Kingdom in southern Nigeria, among others. Yet on the other hand, Achebe believed that Africa benefited from the introduction of Western education, technology and medicine, as well as liberal European ideals such as “democracy” and “equality”, which had not necessarily been popular beforehand.
It is, however, important to emphasise that even between British colonies, there were significant differences in the actual practice of colonialism. It was significantly more brutal in Kenya than in Nigeria, for instance, with the former witnessing bloody events such as the Mau Mau Uprising in which thousands of Kenyans were slaughtered as late as the mid-20th century.
I know some fear that if we start allowing for nuances in our assessments of colonialism, then we are opening the door for white people to shed any guilt whatsoever over the entire affair. That even more Britons will start asserting, humiliatingly for us, that colonialism left our ancestors “better off”. That saying anything “positive” about it is tantamount to justifying it.
I understand this line of reasoning, but I ultimately refuse to live my life in fear of what some people may say or think. That is the quintessential post-colonial complex: living dominated by anxieties over how white people see us. Instead we should liberate ourselves from the shackles of these historical complexes that yes, were thrust upon us, but that only we can shake off ourselves; those complexes that limit what we feel we can say about ourselves once white people are listening. Discussing colonialism frankly is a sign of strength, not weakness.
So for British teachers wondering how to teach the subject, it is important to cite various perspectives, including, crucially, the perspectives of the colonised; not in a wholly arbitrary manner seeking to buttress this or that grand narrative, but in a way revealing the complexities and contradictions of Britain’s colonial encounter with Africa.
This does not mean truth-seeking can be an excuse for insensitivity. The reality is that colonialism is an inherently emotive subject for millions of black and brown people in this country. We need more frank and open debate about it, definitely, but that debate should always serve the ultimate purpose of helping build this nation rather than tearing it apart.
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Subscribe“Imagine foreigners come to your homeland, kill some of you, and tell the rest everything you ever believed is rubbish. Your religion is rubbish, your traditions are rubbish, your values are rubbish, the way you organise your entire economy and life is wrong.”
Don’t have to imagine it – it’s already happening. I don’t believe you’ve not noticed.
An excellent article offering rare nuance on an emotive issue.
One part that I would like to expand upon is this:
‘Imagine foreigners come to your homeland, kill some of you, and tell the rest everything you ever believed is rubbish. Your religion is rubbish, your traditions are rubbish, your values are rubbish, the way you organise your entire economy and life is wrong.’
Part of the complex relationship British people have with our imperial past is that it has happened to us many times. The Romans, the Vikings and the Normans all did the above to us. It is therefore very difficult for many of us to buy into the idea that The British Empire was a uniquely terrible thing which cause a trauma that only black and brown people can understand.
Pretty much everyone on earth has a slave and a slave owner in their ancestry so it is hard to to understand why white westerners alone should feel guilty about this aspect of our past. As you allude to, there are very simplistic narratives that tell us that before European colonialism everyone in Africa lived in an innocent utopia which was ruined by the white man. Most people know this is not true so end up rejecting a lot of criticisms of colonialism.
I think we need a nuanced understanding of this period of our history along with similarly nuanced teaching about all empires, not just those caused by the big, bad white man.
Colonialism is different from ancient and medieval depredations because it happens within the historical era we still inhabit, which can be crudely described as capitalism. Hardly anybody is rich today because they descended from a Roman consul or a Viking chieftain. But a lot of people are rich today because of colonialism.
The vast majority of the British population at the height of the colonial era, say 1900, lived either in abject poverty or not that far above it(eg Rowntree Study – York). They never received a decent return on their own labour, never mind anyone else’s. In terms of slavery African rulers themselves were well and truly complicit. It would have hardly have been possible to capture and kidnap slaves, they were sold into slavery by powerful African chieftains , who actually were furious when the British tried to abolish the trade
All the African chieftains were involved in the Slave business in one form or another. They had been for centuries. The Europeans arrival was merely a ‘new market’ for their merchandise, and probably drove up the prices. The usual customers were either fellow Africans or the Arabs.
Luckily we know who the slave holders were. The African chiefs are a bit of an excuse. If we want to be free of responsibility as a nation when most of us weren’t involved then let’s shop the elites.
The 4 people downvoting my reply here is why Britain is likely doomed. As western power diminishes the calls for reparations will grow larger. Probably led by the US, or a mirror image of the reparations debate that bubbles along over there. And will be the focus if the next election. It’s either going to be from the elites who held slaves, or you. If you believe that you aren’t responsible because your ancestors worked down t’mine then that’s a valid argument, only 0.3% of the population benefited. Otherwise don’t complain if you defend elites and the ideology of recompense takes in everybody.
Who should receive reparations? Africans whose ancestors were not enslaved by white Europeans, or descendants of slaves who are better off than descendants of the non-enslaved?
Or even white Europeans who have suffered for centuries from raids by African slave hunters?
My point wasn’t about who should receive it but who should pay it. I don’t believe in reparations, but if there are any then the slave owners and their descendants should pay it.
Then investigate the African chiefs who were slave agents, not just their customers.
Read my comment above about Africans enslaving our ancestors. Then come back after you’ve studied some real history on the subject of Africans as enslavers of their own peoples as well as others.
Africans enslaved Europeans for hundreds of years. It is estimated that Barbary Pirates sallying forth from North African ports raided settlements around the Mediterranean and the British Isles, Cornwall in particular and as far north as Iceland. Estimates of white slaves taken for sale in the slave markets are as high as 1 1/2 million. The cruel trade was stopped by the U.S Navy, newly formed to tackle the scourage and the British Navy.
“The vast majority of the British population at the height of the
colonial era, say 1900, lived either in abject poverty or not that far
above it(eg Rowntree Study – York). They never received a decent return
on their own labour, never mind anyone else’s.”
Your point surely calls in to question why the ordinary Brit should then feel proud of Britain’s imperial history or oppose any re-consideration of it. Instead they are still being tricked into voting for the descendants of those that led Britain’s Imperial adventures and prevented from seeing that on the whole they, and their antecedents had far more in common with the subjugated people in the empire than with their own leaders.
Very, very few people became rich through British and French colonialism. No more than a few of the more successful farmers and traders. And running those empires generally cost more than they were worth. I would imagine far more people have got richly stealing the trillions in aid that has been sent as a recompense for colonialism.
Of course people got rich. The compensation for the slave holders was 40% of gdp. You are right that the colonial cost to the government was greater than the gain, but private individuals gained.
There is 0 reason to beat ourselves up over it.
Peter Hennessey who wrote some excellent books on post war Britain interviewed a Guards sergeant who’d served in Holland in 1944, the sergeant observed that “these people(the Dutch) lived well, we lived in two up two down holes with outside lavs, yet we were told that we were part of the greatest Empire the world had ever seen, with a quarter of the world coloured red on the map of the globe”. The sergeant felt that this was a big con, and things had needed to change. This illustrates the point that the great majority got little out of the Empire. My great-great grandfather was a child slave in a Lancs cotton mill aged 8 as per 1841 census. So when the race hustlers and grifters come along, I do not feel their pain.
What should be resisted strongly is any general impost on the population to provide “reparations” at the behest of Marxist wannabe revolutionaries ie BLM. Nor do I see why institutions with historic links to slavery should cough up either. The money will come from current customers and from shareholders funds(eg those whose pension money are invested).
Well worth pointing out that the profits of Empire went up in smoke and flame in France and Flanders in 1914-18 followed up by the next war when Britain did its utmost in fighting the Fascist powers, resulting in bankruptcy
‘Of course people got rich.’ How many? What % of the British population? The majority here were effectively slaves. OK they got paid. But often with tokens which had to be spent in the mill owners’ shops. Couldn’t work? Thrown out. Work houses. Etc.
Funny how the white poor of the period are completely ignored in all this.
The compensation to the slave holders was, as always, to facilitate the change over. Do you think it would have happened otherwise? What happened to the money? Used to pay the previous slaves to do the work.
Who is denying that? Why is an attack on the British rich defended by people who say their ancestors weren’t rich. I am fully aware that only 0.3% of the population were compensated. 46,000 if I recall correctly. The equivalent percentage today would be about 200,000. That would be most of the real elites and include a fair few leftists. Also no idea what you mean by the money disappearing. By and large the British, as opposed to the American landholders, invested in slavery as a capital play, making money on selling or on whatever dividend was extracted. When they were paid off they stopped being slave owners.
There is quite a good case to made for the idea that “hire and fire” is/was considerably crueller than slavery.
Slaves were an expensive investment and had be maintained in fine shape, particularly if resale was necessary.
They also represent a high capital cost, that could be onerous if there was market slump. They still had to fed and watered, regardless of cash flow, or sold into buyers market, at a substantial loss.
19th century Mill owners didn’t face this dichotomy, they just ‘fired’ and rehired as required. Hence the rise of the Chartists and others.
Agricultural workers faced the same dilemma, as is well recorded by Robert Blyth in his 1969 work,’Akenfield’ which starkly describes the brutal life of agricultural peasants in late 19th century and early 20th century Suffolk. A rainy day was a day without work, and thus a day without pay for example.
This is a very much under-discussed aspect of slavery. You lost your freedom, but you also avoided a lot of responsibility for your circumstances.
The welfare state offers something of the same bargain.
Far too much emphasis is place on what happened in the American South.
A more holistic approach is required if we are ever to have a serious discussion on the subject, as you so correctly infer.
Nonsense. It was 40% of government annual spending at the time. About £16.5b in modern terms, enough to keep the NHS going for a month.
Immoral though it might seem to modern eyes, it was a necessary and practical compromise in order to achieve abolition, (and also to protect concept of property rights which is the core of the legal system ,abhorrent though the concept of humans as property now is).
Why would you compare 40% of GDP to “modern terms” without using inflation? 40% of today’s GDP would be $1.12 trillion. That’s the modern equivalent.
The higher the amount, and the firmer the constraint of the sanctity of property rights, then the greater the honor to the British State.
Not quite. The early days, from 1603-1860, the days of plunder, as we should call them were very, very profitable.
Just look at how wee little Scotland was transformed for example. Then there was the extremely ungrateful Plantocracy of America, and sugar barons of the West Indies, and last but very much not least, those immortal words spoken at a Parliamentary enquiry by Robert Clive,
“By God Mr Chairman, at this moment I stand a astonished at my own moderation “,
No, the real rot set in when ‘Nanny ‘ (HMG) stepped in and effectively nationalised the East India Company after the Mutiny in 1860. In fact they had been ‘interfering’ for years, much to the detriment of plunder and profit.
Thus in the period 1860-1914 British investment in the Empire was tiny compared with investment in the vibrant, buccaneering USA.
By then the Empire frankly, was a colourful ‘basket case’, a burnt out husk of its former self. A great place for “ripping yarns” and Oxbridge classicists yearning to be Proconsuls, or to play the Great Game’, but otherwise sadly an impediment, to other avenues such as social progress.
Advanced nations were already so far ahead in development* and wealth than large parts of the world when they arrived in.
Industrial Europeans arrived in parts of Africa where the wheel was barely used**. I do not intend to make that as a value judgment, but to say that suggesting that colonialism allowed the colonialists to race ahead is a-historical nonsense I am afraid.
That doesn’t mean that people were not exploited and oppression didn’t occur, but in terms of technological and overall wealth development – colonialism augmented most areas it reached. Further that is not mutually exclusive to the fact that the majority of normal people did not particularly reap the benefits either in the subjugated colonies, or back in Europe (as pointed out in other comments).
But, objectively, colonialism often (not always) left a legacy of infrastructure and development that didn’t exist prior.***
*by this i mean technological, industrial, agricultural, medicine etc.
**albeit due to limited efficiency improvements given the terrain, rather than outright lack of development
*** more so in some areas of the world than others – e.g. compared to India and parts of Asia which were already very well advanced in most aspects
I think one does find in Britain today a significant number of wealthy folk who own lots of land and have names that ‘came over with the Conqueror’.
Quite so. Hardly any of the old Saxon nobility (pre 1066) retained their rank and estates to this day.
Most of them are fantasists.
Get a grip Enzo.
But many of the upper class of Britain even today are descended from the Normans who enslaved and killed the Anglo Saxons.
This is it precisely! My grandparents livded under colonial rule in Ireland (my maternal grandmother was in Dublin on a shopping trip on Easter Sunday 1916!) and the parent’s of my (British) wife were born in British ruled India in what is now Bangladesh. There’s just no comparison with ancient empires from 1000-2000 years ago. Ironically Ireland both benefitted from and suffered under colonialism as it had a foot in both camps, my maternal grandmother worked as a nanny in India for a British Army family but it is of course is still a divided. There was also a civil war in Ireland almost immediately after independence, again not taught at all in schools when my parents were growing up as the participants were all still alive and leaders of each side active in politics. I’m sure it is a similar story in many post-colonial histories.
However, quite a few families are still wealthy nowadays because their remote ancestors were Norman Barons who were “awarded” vast tracts of land here by William of Normandy, also known as William the Conqueror. The Duke of Westminster is but one of these.
“The Grosvenor family traces its roots back to the Norman invasion of England in 1066. The Financial Times said one of its reporters once asked the duke what advice he would give to a young entrepreneur wanting to succeed. He joked: “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror.” “
“In 1066-7 William the b*****d declared that all land, animals and people in the country belonged to him personally. This was as alien to these Isle’s laws and customs as the colonial land-grabs were to the First Nations of America. Over a very short space of time, we went from a country in which >90% of people owned land, to a country of landless serfs, themselves owned by foreign lords. Our lands were parcelled up and given as payment to Williams mercenaries.
Still today, the monarch’s land monopoly remains, in theory and practise, a legal reality. Most of the largest land-owning families are direct descendants of the Norman Yoke and William the b*****d’s 22th great-granddaughter sits upon the ‘English’ throne. Meaning, in this ‘property owning democracy’, land distribution is -for the most part- still determined by ‘Right of Conquest’.”
This is a good example of the lack of true historical understanding resulting from today’s teaching.
“Ancient and medieval” refer to timescales. “Colonialism” refers to an act. They are not inherently mutually exclusive, because they are entirely independent things.
Whether or not colonialism and “ancient medieval depredations” are the same or different in terms of the context we are discussing depends on only one thing. Do they still significantly influence the current life of the victim population?
The colonialism inflicted on various populations of Britian most certainly does. It is in every way relevant to the social and economic structure of Britain today. Rather than recite here, line by line, the ways in which that is the case, I suggest those who have so far not looked beyond “popular” (mis)conception read this as a starting point in explaining how British (especially English) people are still affected by the colonialism of the past despite the fact that it took place in medieval times)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sue-the-normans/
As has been pointed out by others elsewhere… the “British” who spearheaded the colonization of other countries are the same demographic who colonized Britain itself, from Europe, then used it as a new base to continue their task, in our name.
Those of you who talk of colonization a few hundred years ago (most of which is now ending) should try living in a country which is still (effectively) colonized some 1000 years after the event with no sign of it ending at all and few interested in making it so.
David Stanley: A fine, nuanced reply to a fine, nuanced article”a genuine rarity in today’s media environment of polarizing, simplistic extremes of opinion. And this idiotic idea being promoted that to be white is to be inherently racist or colonial fails outright the test of rationality. It is pure emotional reasoning and political cant. As a Canadian of Anglo-Irish descent, I have in my own ancestry many sides of colonial history, both oppressor and oppressed. (Considering what the British did to the Irish for 800 years.) Every empire in history engaged in slavery to build its wealth. It’s not admirable ethically in any sense but it means that virtually no one on Earth has an ancestry that could be said to be totally free of the stain of racism or past slavery. Does that mean we should all cower in shame? Ridiculous. This is just another tool to keep us divided. “Divide and conquer.”
I went to a school where they were so busy trying to make the ethnic
minorities feel good about themselves, that nobody was taught the basic
rules of the English language. I see the people on facebook who are
adults with children using text type.
I had adult education classes to learn what I should have in school.
I have to explain to people the reason I don’t know British classical
subjects that everybody should know about such as Shakespeare, is
because my school was run by a hippie called Hugh Turner who cared more
about teaching us culture from other countries that no employers are
interested in. Apparently the Oxford council now have Hugh teaching
other teachers how to teach children.
Why should anyone choose an emotion pride or shame about historical events hundreds of years ago? Those specific emotions belong only to what you personally are responsible for. Ask the wrong question you get wrong answers. Sounds to me a dubious political trope about “ant-colonialism”. After 70 years of independence, why is it so many people from those colonies want to move to the country of their “oppressor”?
Couldn’t agree more. I feel no shame whatsoever about my ancestors and what they did/didn’t do and why the Hell should I? Move on now people.
To plunder our ludicrously generous benefit system, exploit the NHS to the best of their ability, and generally enjoy the fruits of our much vaunted, liberal democracy.
Why else?
And BLM demand “reparations” in addition.
Havent they already had that in the billions given in FDI over the past 50 years, not to mention charity emergency aid for famine, fires and earthquakes.
Let’s lead from the top. If imperialism is a scandal, it is because of western cultural imperialism.
In the good old days, your Alexanders, your Romans, your Mughals, your Bantus conquered and plundered and enslaved whenever the mood took them. It never occurred to them that other options were available.
Then, some time around 1800, the mood began to change.
I do not think this is because “we” are more moral or more advanced that the conquerors.
I think it is because, in the industrial era, conquest and plunder and slavery Do Not Pay.
Your experience may vary. For indeed, the most imperialist and conquistadorista and slave-minded regimes in history were the great socialist and fascist regimes of the 20th century.
I told my lefty cousin, when she mumbled about “decolonizing the curriculum,” that I was much more worried about the “leftification of the curriculum.”
The comparative lack of overt conquest in Europe from 1700 onwards is something that does need to be talked about more.
The conquistadorista(sic) regimes in the 20C have passed me by.
The Chinese perhaps?
Germany?
USSR.
“We need more frank and open debate about it, definitely, but that
debate should always serve the ultimate purpose of helping build this
nation rather than tearing it apart”
That’s pretty well past praying for, the nation is in process of rapid disintegration
Couple of observations
1) If the UK political class had heeded what public opinion was telling it loud and clear in the fifties and sixties mass immigration would have been rapidly curtailed and the current, invidious, situation would not have arisen.
2) In large part because of the knowledge of the pretty dire conditions in which my own English ancestors existed historically I don’t do white guilt. If our social history was better taught I doubt the ridiculous mob who jumped on top of Colston’s statue and chucked it in the harbour would either.
In the mid ’70’s I set off for the land of my birth , Tanzania, full of revolutionary zeal to write a thesis on Ujamaa the African version of socialism. And met food shortages and chaos.
.. to be told by the watu that things were far better under colonialism.
The thesis got a FAIL.
Even in the 70’s academics had to subscribe to the received wisdom of the time.
Thank you Mr Adekoya for an interesting and nuanced piece on empire: that actually casts some light and avoids the bitterness of so much output in the media. What you write about Nigeria is fascinating, as it is a country I admit to knowing little about, which is also true of post-colonial attitudes and experiences in Africa and elsewhere.
I don’t want to get bogged down in issues about Britain’s imperial past: it is simply such a huge and complex subject; spanning the globe and many centuries, and operating so differently in different countries, or for different classes and groups within those countries.
And I think that is the problem with this idea that children need to be educated about it. A laudable goal; but where do you start? Where do you end? The multi-national make-up of so many classrooms in Britain today seems to offer many opportunities for interesting project work, for example, but it is, as you say, important to avoid triumphalism/guilt/victimhood/blame etc. Another problem of course is the bias of so many teachers, before one even considers their meager knowledge. I didn’t study much history at school until my history A-level, but 40 years of reading since I left school has just served to reveal how little I knew then and when I was at university (and I thought I knew everything when I was an undergraduate!)
Biased and possessing meagre knowledge seems to me to be gratuitously insulting to history teachers. Of course they were all so much better in the old days as was everything.
‘Of course they were all so much better in the old days as was everything.’
If you say so; I didn’t
Very good piece. In order to have an honest conversation about the past nuance is required. Unfortunately we have people in academia right now who would not be able to even contemplate the notion that there may have been positive aspects to imperialism. Even the most reluctant and tentative admission is regarded as racist.
I think history departments up and down the country, if they still have integrity, should put their feet down.
History should be taught precisely how the Remi describes. Teachers and lecturers should endeavor to provide a balanced syllabus to complement whatever topic is being taught, giving a range of perspectives making it clear that these are perspectives and that accounts from all areas have nuances that render them somewhere between objective and subjective.
In my experience there are professors of repute in history departments – but not enough is done to discredit others in the same departments that abuse good historical scholarship to pursue their own socio-political agendas. Colonialism is such a sensitive topic I can understand why this might be tricky – but if we cannot allow the universities to explore it freely, we are in deep trouble.
Wider than universities, the trouble is that too much public discourse is reduced to simple good/bad narratives dependant on pre-existing views. We behave like binary children too far into adulthood.
“I think history departments up and down the country, if they still have integrity, should put their feet down.”
They don’t and they won’t. Our schools and universities are left-wing echo chambers.
It seems to me that this piece is seriously misguided and displays a distinct lack of understanding of how human civilization and societies move forward.
The author should ask himself three very simple questions:
(a) At the time of colonization of sub-Saharan African, the indigenous populations had not even come close (to put it mildly) to reaching the cultural and technical achievements attained by Ancient Rome, Greece, the Persian empire, the Egyptian empire, etc… many years before the birth of Christ.
(b) Had colonization not occurred, how does the author think the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa would look like today. I would posit no different from how they looked in the 19th century. And I would also posit that sub-Saharan African would be disease ridden and starvation would be rampant, not to mention inter-tribe warfare.
(c) If the U.K. is so bad, why are so many from the former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa desperate to come and live in the UK.
Conquest has occurred from time immemorial, and generally this has led to improvements through the transfer of cultural and technological achievements from the conquerors to the conquered. An obvious example is that of the Roman empire, and before that the Greek empire, and before that the Persian empire, etc.. etc…. Think about it this way. If England had not be conquered by the Romans, and simply left in splendid isolation, how does the author think things would have progressed.
Would the same apply to the conquest of ancient Egypt by a sub Saharan kingdom and hence the long line of black pharoes?
And to answer your closing question, we’d have likely progressed to the level of modern Ireland who were never conquered by the Romans, or possibly Germany.
But we were conquered and colonised by England from the16th century onwards, subjected to penal laws and excluded from government. Deprived of land, power, religion and language, denigrated and mocked as ignorant barbarians, I have no positive feelings about the British Empire although I hold no grudge against the English today – except in rugby matches!
In fairness Scots / Scoti were originally invaders from Ireland. Ancient Britons fled from successive invaders to Ireland as well as France / Britanny ; Spain / Britonnia. The savagery inflicted on England rivals anything visited on Ireland if we’re playing competitive victimhood. Siege of Derry anyone? – I’m allergic to Irish victim nationalism having had it drilled into me as a child at home and school at same time as Provo gangsters we’re blowing people up and terrorising their neighbours generally. These days we’re on the same side.
I agree Sean, I’m completely against victim nationalism. These days we are all on the same side. But when I read people extolling the benefits of the empire, I find that somewhat short-sighted. I just think that in reckoning with the empire, there needs to be some level of acknowledgement of the damage caused.
“Imagine foreigners come to your homeland, kill some of you, and tell the rest everything you ever believed is rubbish. Your religion is rubbish, your traditions are rubbish, your values are rubbish, the way you organise your entire economy and life is wrong.” Some might say that is happening now in the UK!
And across Europe.
Some might?
Many , many would.
I am certainly proud of the record of the British Empire in Africa, including Nigeria, but not because I ‘take pride in ancestral conquests’, as Dr Adekoya puts it. Rather because the British abolished slavery, and brought peace, order and good government. The Emirate of Kano, after all, was the last great slave state. The Muslim emirs of Northern Nigeria used to launch annual slave hunts to replenish their supplies, leaving whole areas depopulated.
More broadly, it is difficult to see, if the European empires had not taken control of the African continent in the late 19th century, how else Africa might have peacefully entered the modern world. Any alternatives would have much bloodier.
I bet they won’t teach slave hunts in the new curriculum.
No, but they should, and that’s the point. As the author says, it is truth we should be aiming at. What most of us fear is that that is not what the curriculum decolonisers are aiming at.
I found your article very interesting. I was born in Zambia when it was Northern Rhodesia. My father was in the Colonial Service. I have been reading his tour diaries. He visited and mapped large areas of the Northern Province speaking to the chiefs and collecting data, the number of children in the schools, the state of the buildings, the kinds of crops, the state of roads and bridges, etc. He was only 21 when he was first posted to a bush station. He was utterly dependent on the Africans around him, his messengers, his cook, Gideon and his gradual understanding of Bemba. He loved Zambia and its people. He was an Irish man working for a British Colonial Administration. He was a decent man who treated everyone he met with the respect they deserved regardless of colour. His degree was in History. You are right. We should learn about the British Empire from all perspectives and from everyone’s point of view. Seeking to know and understand who we are and where we come from is natural if not essential and all the people of different heritage in Britain deserve to be taught how to learn History. Go to the original sources both indigenous and colonial and then make up your own mind about the rights and wrongs of things. Ignorance is not bliss, it is unforgivable.
An excellent, nuanced article.
“Obviously, as Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s famous 1958 book, Things Fall Apart, brilliantly portrayed, the disruption colonialism brought to the lives of everyday Nigerians was massive, and in my view, ultimately indefensible. Imagine foreigners come to your homeland, kill some of you, and tell the rest everything you ever believed is rubbish. Your religion is rubbish, your traditions are rubbish, your values are rubbish, the way you organise your entire economy and life is wrong.
The assault on African ideas was so severe that the continent is still trying to recover its identity; still trying to figure out an idea for modern Africanness that would not be an imitation of Westernness or so focussed on resisting Eurocentrism it ends up defining Africans in opposition to Europeans, thus ultimately being Eurocentric itself.”
Some of us had this with regard to the EU. Ironically, it was the same type of people (well-educated Brits) that were telling us our culture was rubbish (Dawkins, a remainer), our economy was rubbish [outside the EU] (Osborne), everything we believed about Britain’s capacity to be independent was rubbish (remainers as a whole).
It is actually a bit difficult to be pro-British empire at times when you’ve had a British public servant arrogantly tell you what’s good for you within an imperial project, even if that project is a different organism like the EU.
Getting over humiliation is difficult, and I wish the Nigerians well in this endeavour. Teaching about the past must try and respect the dignity of those involved without warping the narrative. Not an easy thing to do.
For our part, I hope we can point out the places we protected, but did not invade. They uplift themselves, keep their culture and pride, and we get the credit for keeping other empires away from them. Botswana may be one good example of that, but I need to read up on that more.
I liked Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart. But I think a sort of madness consumed him later (in the context of the fevered madness of postmodern postcolonial literary ‘thought’). Achebe sought ‘to turn the tables on the oppressor’ by attacking Joseph Conrad as ‘a thoroughgoing racist’. This was really shortsighted of him and a poor reading of Heart of Darkness.
Yes, I never understood why he did that. Any man that criticised imperialists as “the lessor animals” compared to mules probably isn’t going to be buddy-buddy with an oppressor like Leopold.
Nigerians will never get over their “humiliation” as it is in essence nationalist pride, and the vast European legacy, not so much of colonialism as western science is so great, so pervasive that it can never be undone.
The “rubbishing” of Nigerian cultures is really their supplanting by scientific practicality and invention. The anguish from prideful nationalist Nigerians is that they didnt pioneer the discoveries themselves.
Caught in such a Gordian bind the neuroses the author displays explain themselves. They are also unresolvable, except through future waves of “progress” being driven by Africans, pride and preeminence, or at least equality of achievement, restoring some degree of balance, and the draining of neuroses.
That Nigerians are in no fit place to pioneer tge next tech wave, throws nationalistic pride back on itself. Add to the mix the appalling self-governance of much of post-colonial African – appalling at least by British standards and values, which is itself the measure of honest governance, and a further impliment of nationalistic self-torture, and the neuroses kick off again, and as the author notes, Nigerians cannot speak honestly in front of whites for fear of being judged, which is more their own warped pride than anything else.
The best the author can hope for is prig middle class liberalism, endlessly seeking to acclaim its own virtue, will through its obsession with blacks, continue to indulge tge pouty teeth kissing anguish ridden race relations narrative, as a way for white liberals to display their moral and social superiority.
Very colonial.
Who is listening any more?
No one I know, the story of the little boy who cried wolf is now about all this racist, anti British history and never ending pieces about how evil we are.
No one is listening any more
I cannot, of course, substantiate my following blindingly obvious assertion but here goes anyway: The vast majority of the British public is sick to the teeth of ‘wokeness’, ‘diversity’, ‘equality’, ‘victimhood’, ‘inclusiveness’, the ‘twitterati’, the BBC and the demented mass media, above all the divisive, discriminatory, racist and profoundly insulting ‘BLM’ and its nauseating ‘taking the knee’, Starmer and his Rabble Party and the Scottish National Party and Sturgeon. Have I left anything out? Oh yes, the universities and schools.
I’m reminded of all the disgraceful machinations perpetrated by remainers (I exclude the decent democracy-respecting ones) who were given a resounding two fingers in the last general election. So Andrew, the silent majority out there is biding its time but the time will come indeed when all the above elements listed earlier will get their due desserts.
By the way, a good article by Dr Adekoya.
Absolutely spot on, John Nutkins. Roll on that day of just desserts.
We studied the ‘Scramble for Africa’ for O level History 40 years ago. We were not so much taught that it was good or bad, but that it was largely mad.
I was thinking something similar – my A-level course in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European History, a quarter of a century ago, included the Ottoman Empire (the only actual exam question I remember from my A-levels was “Did Suleyman the Magnificent deserve his title more by virtue of his foreign conquests or his achievements at home?”). We studied the Ottomans neutrally and dispassionately as an imperial power active in Eastern Europe. I wonder if anyone studies that topic now at A-level, let alone taught with the scholarly rigour and unbiased curiosity about the past that I remember from my teachers.
Those were the days, we shall not see their like again.
If one has got into a situation it’s theoretically possible to get out of it.
A very nicely written piece, and as several other commentators have observed, notable for its nuanced argument and conclusions. It highlights just how intellectually poverty-stricken are the kinds of history promulgated by the proponents of identity politics, especially the shriekers who call for decolonisation of the curriculum. Thank you, Mr Adekoya.
Of course Nigeria is a creation of the British. It did not exist before. So if British rule was so terrible why hasn’t Nigeria been broken up and returned to its pre colonial state ?
Well, the Igbo wanted to do this, at least with respect to the Igbo majority regions, but they *lost* their civil war. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
This is one reason why I have severe reservations about the existance of any ‘African’ identity. The Nigerian one was enforced at gunpoint. Nation building has historically worked out better through the creation of institutions, especially state-run that the citizenry can respect and even admire. Rule of Law, Indoor Plumbing, a National Public Health Service — everybody can get around these things whether or not they are part of that mythical ‘national identity’ or even more mythical ‘African identity’ that current western elites demand. The Nigerian realists who liked colonialism better than independence mostly were asserting that they liked British institutions — contract law, in particular — and their understandable fear that the new Nation might be run by those who did not value them.
The Igbo tried to do this, (at least for the majority Igbo region) but they lost the Biafran war. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
If you feel like learning read this http://markcurtis.info/2007… . The truth is that at the point when Nigeria’s seperate protectorates would have either split or joined other existing countries the UK government intervened. Why? The same reason they went to Iraq, oil. If the peoples of the South South gained their independence the British knew they may lose their access to the vast mineral deposits found there. They quickly explained the situation to the Northern tribe they had placed in charge (due to finding them easier to control) and armed them to the teeth
There is a difference between being “proud” and not being ashamed. I am not ” proud “of everything my ancestors did eg Danes raping and plundering christian settlements in the uk. However I am not ashamed of their actions given that I had no involvement in it whatsoever and if it hadn’t happened I might not even be here ! Incidentally I am proud that my ancestors led the way in abolishing slavery .
I would wholeheartedly support a frank and open contemporary assessment of colonialism (which was not an exclusively British phenomenon by the way).
The most surprising fact I have learned recently on the subject of Britain’s former colonies, is just how many British ICS officials, businessmen, military officers and officials and judges from the judiciary were asked to stay in both India and Pakistan following independence.
While clearly neither of these countries wished to to prolong British rule, they must have felt that there had also been some benefits.
“”There was a little on colonialism in India, but nothing about Africa.”
There was no colonisation of India. The numbers of Brits went to India was trivial compared to the population. And they went to trade and later to administer. Few with any intention of remaining in the sub-continent permanently.If it was “colonised” it was by the Moguls, centuries earlier
An excellent article. Thank you for your clear thinking on this issue which causes so much division and lunacy in people -especially the ‘outrage’ mob.
When I traveled through India many years ago I was struck by just how many people I met there spoke of Churchill, someone about whom I really knew only the most obvious facts (his contribution to history was already being slowly cancelled by then), and indeed the British Empire, with a degree of reverence, knowledge, fondness and nostalgia that took me aback. I had not expected this at all and in many ways did not wish to find it. But there it was.
My only criticism of the piece is that as the writer gets to the end I sensed the creeping self doubts that seem to say –but how will the mob respond? I may be wrong. But as I found, the ‘perspectives of the colonised’, if openly apprehended, may well surprise and confound the ideologically concretised ravings of that mob.
Your experiences in India many years ago reflect those I gained from living in Malaysia for 10 years from 2005 – 2015.
So much of discussion of empire today is based on the requirements of contemporary left activism. Hence you have may have British culpability for the smallest historical incident, but others overlooked. How much of the turmoil in the Balkans and Near East has been laid at Turkey’s doorstep from the conquests of the Ottoman Empire? Had the Brits mixed and matched religions in Bosnia, etc. we would hear no end of it.
Added, never underestimate the role of local dynamics in the building of the empire. Local power brokers very often leveraged British help against a neighbouring opponent(s).
Lastly, fate is fickle. The British East India Company exploited the disunity of what is now India in the 18th Century. Why did the Moghuls (or anyone else) not form a ‘Western European Company’ in the 17th Century?
Even today local power brokers (aka as activists) attempt to leverage the help of the West against opponents. We are often easily led these days and, unfortunately, have developed a habit of creating mayhem.
Good article generally but I have qualms about “but that debate should always serve the ultimate purpose of helping build this nation rather than tearing it apart.”
It is more that debate should always serve the ultimate purpose of providing a fair, balanced and educated understanding of the past and this will help build this nation rather than tearing it apart.
Debates about the Empire always seem to be about Britain’s activities in Africa, India and the West Indies.
Those, though, turned out in the long term to be the least important parts of the Empire and the least known to ordinary British people. Of far more significance in the long run were those parts of the world where our fellow countrymen and women created lasting replicas of home – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and, in part, South Africa. Everyone back here knew someone – usually a family member – who had gone to help populate the great wildernesses of North America and the southern hemisphere. In any fair and proportionate consideration of the Empire we should hear far more about their experiences, and perhaps rather less about the tropical colonies.
The indiginous people’s of Australia, new Zealand and Canada say otherwise. They didn’t want their wilderness populated and stolen thank you. Although I’m sure many immigrants that came here (NZ) were peacefully and we’ll intentioned, land was stolen, indiginous people’s lost their rights to their own land, racism abounded as the “civilized” British forced their way of life and law always sided with the invaders.
But let’s move on, it’s all history now and those who committed the atrocities are long gone. But please don’t justify colonialism. It’s wrong to sail to another country and subjugate it’s inhabitants
Your closing remark is a fairpoint. The challenging question is, if it was wrong to steal the land is it not right to return it?
Isnt drawing a line under history an evasion of that responsibilty to set right a historical wrong, which should be especially acute in those who believe colonialism was wrong or a crime, who seem to enjoy the virtue of condemning “the colonial thief” while still living off the proceeds of his crimes?
Should it not be the indigineous people who decide what is fair and equitable reparation, and for anti-colonial liberals to show willing to “return” what was stolen out of their own personal equity, especially land and property?
What a relief to read a balanced and considered essay on the differing interpretations of the legacy of colonialism. Something that’s sadly lacking in other outlets. ( BBC take note ) Nothing is to be gained from the encouragement of constant resentment and ‘whataboutery’ from both respective viewpoints whereby the ‘other’ narrative must be crushed. As I come from a white British background, I have no time for the ‘sins of the fathers’ narrative. Similarly I don’t condemn other peoples for the sins of their forebears. History is important and should be a continual reference, but we live now and today is more important. I fear that we are trying to relive and rewrite the past from differing viewpoints, rather than thinking about the future.
Very interesting and reasonable article. Thank you.
I would only like to pick up on one passage.
I think that fear is entirely misplaced: people who feel no “guilt” over colonialism are unlikely to require emboldening in their views and are probably not actually listening to any discourse on the subject.
(I will not even go into the issue of guilt for things that happened decades before my birth.)
An interesting, not to say provocative essay, but does it really matter now? Is anybody really that interested in what has become a toxic subject, where emotion has triumphed over reason?
It also struck me as slightly unbalanced, for example in mentioning the repulsive Leopold of Belgium, could you not have mentioned his nemesis Roger Casement?
Additionally a few more words on Mau Mau would have been useful, if only to highlight the true enormity of that brutal rebellion.
Guilty as charged,and duly admonished. Thank you.
One relevant point you omitted to mention was that in 1960 when the British left Nigeria the population was estimated to be about 45 million. Now it is about 200 million.
Likewise in Kenya, when we left in 1963 it was nearing 9 million, now it’s about 52 million.
What will be the end result?
I might have misunderstood this, but I was under the impression that those who wish to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ don’t confine themselves to changing the way that the history of the British Empire is taught. Rather, they take the view that entire educational curriculum is compiled from the perspective of white men and is therefore colonised – including maths, science, engineering and languages. There are implications for us all.
Good point. Another example of post-modern radical Marxism being smuggled in under the cover of a fuzzy feel-good tagline. cf Motte & Bailey argument.
You haven’t misunderstood. That is their demand.
The decolonisers do not see the irony of their demands.
This was all balanced and logical untill the mention of white guilt. The colour of someone’s skin does not make them guilty of something that maybe a distant relative did. In saying “maybe” I’m not suggesting bad things did not happen. I’m suggesting that bad things are done by individuals. Not every person born into a colonialist society does evil things. We have all said and done things that we are not proud of, and don’t think you are innocent.
I’m not guilty of anything any of my ancestors did. Nor do I claim restitution for anything that was done to my ancestors. That’s ridiculous, illogical and devisive. I’m only guilty of what I have done and an can only change myself now for a better future.
Discussion of the past is an excellent way of learning. Reasoned dialogue without name calling can lead to understanding to those who value a fairer future. In my opinion we should leave race and colour out of every discussion as fairness should not be based on these.
I too reject the theory of white guilt. It’s very premise is the embodiment of racism.
It applies to no other race or group of people. In fact when applied to others the very hint of collective, historic guilt is robustly rejected and called out as racist or phobic in some way.
In NZ Maori arrived between 1290 and 1350. The first Maori killed off the mega fauna (large birds) and then concentrated in the north where their one main crop sweet potato grew. The Europeans introduced agriculture. For example on the Canterbury Plain (Christchurch) the settlement began in 1850, by 1853 there were 100,000 sheep and 2000 cattle. There were fewer than 500 Moari in 1850. 121 years later they were less than 2% of the population. Post the 2011 earthquake they still felt the need to “decolonise” the city.
If you wish to steal another man’s county and settle it, the brutal rule is you exterminate the host population.
It worked well in the USA, Australia and as you say NZ. Inadvertently the Spanish found it fairly effective in South America and even the Japanese seem to have ‘removed’ the aboriginal Ainu.
The only notable failure seems to have been South Africa.
The Normans didn’t “exterminate” the Saxons. They married them and interbred with them. The Arab conquerors did the same across North Africa and the Middle East. These successful examples of assimilation are a pretty big exception to the “brutal rule” you posit.
You may have missed it, but I was referring to John Hurley’s (above) remark about the near extermination of the Moari.
What you describe with the Normans, was what the Americans so prosaically describe as “regime change”, In that specific case 4,000 Anglo-Saxon Thegns were replaced by about 175 Norman thugs. Not many Norman peasants settled, and why would they give up the richest province in France for soggy old England? The major ‘French ‘ influx probably occurred post 1154, with the Plantagenet conquest.
I would thought better examples of assimilation, as you so politely call it, were the Anglo-Saxon migration, or the Danish settlement and conquest, of perhaps even that most stupendous event of all, the Roman Conquest (Claudian) of Britain.
As to the Arabs, again ‘regime change’, and little assimilation or settlement in Sassanian Persia, nor the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Even the conquest of Spain whilst Arab led buy such people as the redoubtable Tariq, (of Gibraltar fame) saw an influx, as one might expect, from the adjacent Maghreb
What was unusual about the conquest of the Americas, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand was there was so little effort to ‘harvest’ the available Human Resources, would you not agree?
Thank you for the offer regarding Lemberg and Galicia, which I shall be only too happy to hold you to, once The Great Panic has passed.
.
Yes, rather wasteful of us Kiwis to neglect harvesting the natives, but simply settling for decimation. Our Aussie cousins proved even more efficiently wasteful, almost gaining a perfect score on Tasmania. Then again they did hunt the Aboriginals for sport, so they were of use in the improvement of the gentleman’s aim.
I gather you were able to get a Game License to hunt Kalahari Bushmen, in what is now Namibia, up until 1939.
Assuming the whole story is not apocryphal, the Hunter was just as likely to end up as the hunted!
I can respect that system just a smidgeon more than the Aussie one – at least there was a sporting chance given to the oppressed to revenge themselves.
The MÄori warriors certainly gave the Imperial and Colonial troops a good run for their money, although hopelessly outnumbered and equipped.
Nobody’s perfect.
“In the first half of the nineteenth century, however, individual iwi considered carrying their martial culture beyond the shores of New Zealand. At least three expeditions of conquest were planned: to Samoa, to Norfolk Island, and to the Chatham Islands, which did not become part of New Zealand until 1842. All these proposed expeditions were dependent on finding transport to those places: and that meant finding a European ship’s captain whose vessel was available for charter; or it meant Maori commandeering a vessel for the purpose.
In the event there were no expeditions to Norfolk Island or to Samoa because the necessary transport was not secured. But there was an invasion of the Chathams Islands. Two Taranaki tribes then based in Wellington, Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga ki Poneke, hijacked a European vessel in 1835 and had themselves”a total of 900 people”delivered to Chatham Islands. There they takahi’d or walked the land to claim it; ritually killed around 300 Chatham Moriori out of a total of around 1600, and enslaved the survivors”separating husbands from wives, parents from children, forbidding them to speak their own language or practise their own customs, and forcing them to violate the tapus of their culture, whose mana was based on the rejection of violence.
Was this a superior form of colonisation to that imposed by European on Maori? Did it respect the dignity and customs of the colonised? Did it acknowledge the mana whenua of the tchakat henu or indigenous people of the Chathams? It did not. It was what might now be called an exercise in ethnic cleansing. When Bishop Selwyn arrived in the islands in 1848, it was to discover that the Maori called Moriori “Paraiwhara” or “Blackfellas”; and it was to report that the Moriori population continued to decline at a suicidal rate as a consequence of kongenge or despair. Moriori slaves were not released and New Zealand law was not established on the islands until 1862, twenty years after they had become part of New Zealand. And it is that twenty years of neglect of fiduciary duty on the part of the Crown that is the basis for the Moriori claim to the Waitangi Tribunal, heard in 1994, but still not reported upon.
http://www.sof.org.nz/origi…
Actually there were never any “Moari” but in 1850 there were approx 90,000 Maori.
Rather curious that you say us pÄkehÄ introduced “agriculture” to New Zealand when in the same breath you mention the MÄori’s cultivation of our wondrous kÅ«mara. Perhaps we might like to claim not just bringing agriculture to Aotearoa, but culture itself? Perhaps music? Religion? Civilisation? Humanity?
That is splitting hairs. The kumara we buy today is a much improved variety to the one Maori cultivated.
I wouldn’t say it was splitting hairs, since the MÄori already had an impressively effective kÅ«mara system going already, but you’ve got a good point. And also not to forget how they took to the common spud as it was so much easier to tend than their kÅ«mara. They thought it was some sort of super-vege.
“True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past.”
Nelson Mandela
We just have to accept the past as we can’t change it, we should be reminded of all of it good and bad in order to stand a better chance of repeating the good bits and learning not to repeat the bad bits. Airbrushing it out or throwing statues in the quay sole nothing
Perhaps a large part of the problem is that people of colour cling too much to the separateness of distant heritage. White Britons have a whole lot of mixed ancestry, but it seems to me to have far more more importance to Britons of colour.
I think it’s time to wake up and declare that no matter where our ancestors came from, we are all British, we all choose to live here, and therefore equally ‘own’ our country’s history, both good and bad.
I went to a school where they were so busy trying to make the ethnic minorities feel good about themselves, that nobody was taught the basic rules of the English language. I see the people on facebook who are adults with children using text type.
I had to have adult education classes to learn what I should have in school.
I have to explain to people the reason I don’t know British classical subjects that everybody should know about such as Shakespeare, is because my school was run by a hippie called Hugh Turner who cared more about teaching us culture from other countries that no employers are interested in. Apparently the Oxford council now have Hugh teaching other teachers how to teach children.
A minor point, but please stop inaccurately referring to “the killing of George Floyd”. George Floyd was not “killed”. George Floyd died because he was a junkie who overdosed on an illegal drug that causes respiratory failure. Really you should refer to “the suicide of George Floyd”.
Don’t be ridiculous.
Have you seen the videos from the cops’ body cameras or read the autopsy report prepared by the Coroner’s Office of Hennepin County? Both readily available and proving exactly that Floyd was not killed by police brutality. All the cops will be acquitted and even deadlier riots will ensue.
There is only one person being ridiculous here and it ain’t Chris Martin, unless telling the truth is to be regarded as being ridiculous.
Sadly, telling the truth is frowned on nowadays if that truth is “offensive” to the wrong people.
You obviously haven’t seen the latest footage. Even the progressive on Reddit acknowledge that they were lied to. And CNN etc continue to lie about this and every other issue.
The ‘successful’ European cultures colonised & absorbed their neighbours before going ‘abroad’. Many such cultures exist in history books, or residual form only. I know ‘the colonists’ language For eg rather better than my native one.
Africans have no monopoly on the loss that colonisation brings.
“This presents no small challenge, the problem being that Britain is inhabited both by the descendants of those who were conquered, and those who did the conquering. One’s story of victorious expansion is the other’s reminder of humiliating subjugation.”
My forebears left Ireland with many other during the potato famine and were allowed entry to England and subsequently citizenship. Many years later, I received a very satisfactory education paid for mostly by the State and have followed a satisfying career. I am grateful to those conquerers, and have no feeling of “humiliating subjugation” (which would be related to my ancestors not to me personally). Perhaps the issue is that too many wish to dwell on the distant past, and not focus on the many positive aspects of their current situation in Britain.
What a great article.
This is the only part of the article where I think you are wrong, and have perhaps misjudged British psychology. Once white people are no longer portrayed as the unique and exclusive evil doers of world history (often by other, richer, more privileged white people), you will find them far more willing to admit the faults of their history.
Most British people are very fair, and pride themselves on their fairness. And they will respond to a fair evaluation of history. But if they are getting beaten up all the time – especially by the posh descendants of the posh people who gained most from empire – then they dig their heels in.
This is precisely the kind of article we need to open the debate. Thanks again.
“This presents no small challenge, the problem being that Britain is inhabited both by the descendants of those who were conquered, and those who did the conquering. One’s story of victorious expansion is the other’s reminder of humiliating subjugation.”
Herein lies the grave concern that is yet to be addressed.
We have all seen that the history of British colonialism has provided a rich seam for grievance pedlars to mine in this country never mind in former colonies such as Nigeria. They have been chipping away at it for decades now. From where else did the theory of white privilege spring? The negative manner in which the history of the British Empire is taught – and it is rarely, if ever balanced let alone positive (ask Nigel Biggar) – has arguably lent a legitimising narrative to much of the violence that is being played out in Africa (for instance the current war on Christians in parts of Nigeria), across the Middle East and now here in this country.
I can imagine the difficulty that history teachers face today but given the fact that a great many inner city schools now have classes in which the majority of children are from ethnic minorities it is essential that a balance is found and quickly otherwise we are simply whipping up misplaced resentment and hate against the white population and unnecessarily traumatising others.
I saw a video of the archaeologist, author and broadcaster Neil Oliver being interviewed the other day. He made a very good point, which I shall paraphrase.
The past happened. In it, people did good things and bad things, and those people are now dead. It is ridiculous for us today to feel either pride or shame for what our nations did in the past, because we were not involved.
I saw a video of the archaeologist, author and broadcaster Neil Oliver being interviewed the other day. He made a very good point, which I shall paraphrase.
The past happened. In it, people did good things and bad things, and those people are now dead. It is ridiculous for us today to feel either pride or shame for what our nations did in the past, because we were not involved.
i have been a history teacher in a UK state school for 8 years, and obviously i have many friends and colleagues who teach/taught across the UK, and we all have taught the Empire from both sides as long as i can remember. I get fed up of people who don’t know (not history teachers!) saying that it is not taught! It is beyond my comprehension that any history teacher in a state school would not teach at least a balanced study of the Empire.
Sorry, but have to call you out on that.
I have 2 children who went through the education system between 2003 and 2017. Neither of them were taught anything about the British Empire, in any year, in any subject.
Sorry to be pedantic Rob, but as a teacher you surely know that you can not be ‘fed up of’ You can only be ‘fed up with’.
Maybe just an error, or maybe it explains how come so many young people can not write English.
Did you bother to check what children are actually being taught in this country before writing this article?
A cursory glance would show you that your suggestion was adopted decades ago and is now skewed heavily on the side of anti-colonialism.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bites…
I am a bit puzzled. If you want to decolonise the curriculum then why teach colonialism? In fact why teach it at all? Isn’t that decolonising? Secondly if we are going to decolonise the UK shouldn’t all immigrants leave? They are colonists not BrItish people. It seams that what immigrants want is for all white BrItish people to leave so they can have Britain to themselves. Funny thing this decolonisation.
This approach also looks like yet more postmodernist ‘deconstruction’ of the very idea of UK along intersectional lines, so beloved of the far left. In order to replace us with what?
Dishwatery, weak and highly prejudiced. Would Dr Adekoya be now in a squalid Lagos (or worse, Poznan) street, selling doughnuts, if his country had not benefitted from the administration of a more mature and capable nation?
We Britons have not had an invader since 1066, and in the interim we led the world in civilised advancement …until the last couple of decades, and that period has not been beneficial.
Jesus Christ! As one whose cherished ancestors are mostly Anglo-Saxon, and whose home is a cherished place colonised by those ancestors (with mixed results, and mixed feelings from the descendants of both the conquerors and conquered) I read such ignorant supremacist hubris with visceral disgust.
History is the ideological analysis of selected events – not a catalogue of events.
If there is one great lesson to twentieth century history it is that people much prefer being oppressed by their own kind rather than foreigners.That is the anti-colonialist narrative, or should we call it the nationalist one?
And it is that not at least THEIR right…in THIER country. It seems the colonialist way of thinking still abounds. No wonder people are protesting.
Excellent piece. This is your key phrase:
“some fear that if we start allowing for nuances in our assessments of colonialism, then we are opening the door for white people to shed any guilt whatsoever over the entire affair.”
And this is the whole problem in the wokerati dominated age. We aren’t allowed nuances because someone will bite your head off even before you’ve finished your sentence. Thank heaven for this website.
Rome went from Commonwealth to Empire, didn’t it? But has any other Empire, besides the British one, ever transformed itself into a global Commonwealth, which, to date, is attractive to about 40% of the global population (and growing)?
I note that Mr Adekoya hails a chap called Achebe approvingly as ‘an intellectual’. I am sure there have always been clever chaps in Africa, but ‘an intellectual’ is surely a label that is a product of contact with the West? Another score for colonialism.
And on another tack, since most (all?) African countries are pretty badly run, and do not seem to get much better, wouldn’t it be a good idea if they all were adopted (not colonised) by Western mentor countries? The system works well in other contexts.
Adopt A Country!
What a concept!
If S.Africa can produce Charlize Theron, I’ll take that one!
Too much pride, greed and corruption in the majority of African nations.
They’ll take your money but without the advice on how to spend it.
“score FOR colonialism”??? Please!!! There is no justification for sailing to another occupied land, killing the indiginous people’s and confiscating their land and importing your own people and culture… then claim to be the civilized ones….
Everyone thinks THEIR culture is correct and the others need changing and teaching. And that’s bollocks.
I find myself almost weeping on the rare occasion these days that I read something that is so balanced and humane, and even more so as it comes from a descendant of the “conquered”.
When it comes to any historical period or subject, taking a nuanced approach is often the best way to understand it because, it turns out, humans being are a pretty complicated species and our history follows suit. ‘Black and white’ narratives (in this case quite literally in some cases!) are ultimately unhelpful because they propagate a simplistic understanding, and if human beings and our history where so simple to grasp, we probably wouldn’t argue about it so much!
With all that in mind, to understand British Colonialism/Imperialism is to understand a wide array of perspectives and factors given its long reach across the globe and how it span almost three centuries of history. This large scope is probably why it isn’t taught at schools so much – because creating a coherent narrative out of it isn’t so easy or even necessarily desirable – each former colony is really its own story. Even so, given its close historical and cultural proximity to the world we live in today, it’s an important period to try and understand no matter how difficult or painful it might be for some.
I’m not going to attempt any kind of concerted study here of course (that’s what history books are for), but I will say that whilst it is perfectly natural and valid to compare British Imperialism with that of the great Empires of the past and those contemporary to it most notably, directly equating British Imperialism to any other Empire in history and either trying to justify or explain it purely on these comparative grounds is misguided. No one Empire in history was alike despite their obvious similarities, and the British Empire is no different, existing across a specific span of history that saw the rise of Western civilisation across the globe at large, economically, territorially and culturally, and thus must be understood within this wider context just for a start.
Then there’s the tricky question, of relevance to contemporary perceptions of the Empire, as to whether ‘Britishness’ as we understand it even today is derived from the idea of the Empire itself, especially given its Imperial Roman origins (Brittania) and the fact the term ‘Great Britain’ was only officially revived with the Acts of Union 1707, just around the time the British Empire proper was really getting going. Granted, the term ‘Brittania’ was in turn derived by the Romans from Celtic roots: ‘Pritani’ and Britons from ‘Britt-os’, but two questions arise from this linguistic fact. One – how much did the ancient Britons see themselves as a collective people until or even after the Romans came and not just distinct tribal groups? Two – how much can modern-day Britons claim ancestry from these Celtic (and even older native inhabitants) given the long line of genetic diversity via further invasions, migrations and inter-mixing since?
In other words, it makes you wonder how much that modern-day sense of ‘British identity’ to the average Brit is, even unconsciously, inextricably linked to the memory and even collective identity of the British Empire which it arguably grew out of rather than the more spurious ancient Celt connection. Lastly there is the all-important question of how that affects the relationships between not just the UK and its former colonies and other peoples/countries affected by the Empire (a big one being China) but also how it affects the descendants of both subjects and subjecters on a more interpersonal and intrapersonal level.